Lu Xun and purposeful translation

Lu Xun, the most prominent writer of modern Chinese literature, was also a prolific, persistent and important translator of literature and literary theories at a time when literary translation had become a driving force behind the modernizing effort and when literary translation went hand in hand with literary creativity in early 20th century China.

However, much of the discussion of Lu Xun's translation has been largely focused on his promotion of zhiyi (straightforward translation) and his subsequent argument with Liang Shiqiu, his insistence on fidelity over fluency (ning xin er bu shun), his prioritising of "foreignization" over "domestication" (yangqi yu guihua, and his promotion of a Europeanised version of vernacular Chinese.

This essay seeks to examine Lu Xun's translations and his writings and reflections on his own translations from the perspective of the purposes of translation, both general and specific. It will attempt to show that this purpose-oriented translation determined his selection of translation materials, his understanding of his target readers, his choice of translation method, and also his choice of two specific strategies that affected the fluency of some of his translated theoretical texts.